WHAT WE FACE – AT 9:31 A.M. ET: Many commentators are still stunned by President Obama's remarks in the last few days, seeming to downplay the threat of terrorism, and even to suggest that the attacks on a Jewish delicatessen in Paris wasn't directed against Jews. As the president meanders through his semi-thoughts, ISIS gains. From AP:
WASHINGTON — Foreign fighters are streaming into Syria and Iraq in unprecedented numbers to join the Islamic State or other extremist groups, including at least 3,400 from Western nations among 20,000 from around the world, U.S. intelligence officials say in an updated estimate of a top terrorism concern.
Intelligence agencies now believe that as many as 150 Americans have tried and some have succeeded in reaching in the Syrian war zone, officials told the House Homeland Security Committee in testimony prepared for delivery on Wednesday. Some of those Americans were arrested en route, some died in the area and a small number are still fighting with extremists.
The testimony and other data were obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
Nick Rasmussen, chief of the National Counterterrorism Center, said the rate of foreign fighter travel to Syria is without precedent, far exceeding the rate of foreigners who went to wage jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia at any other point in the past 20 years.
U.S. officials fear that some of the foreign fighters will return undetected to their homes in Europe or the U.S. to mount terrorist attacks. At least one of the men responsible for the attack on a satirical magazine in Paris had spent time with Islamic extremists in Yemen.
COMMENT: And we must ask how difficult it would be for ten operatives to strike in ten different American cities at the same hour. That's terrorism. Its purpose is to terrorize, to make people afraid, to force them to change their lives. And it often succeeds.
Now multiply what you've just read by a million, which might be the impact if terror groups like ISIS get weapons of mass destruction. But, like Scarlet in "Gone With the Wind," we won't think about that today. We'll think about that tomorrow.
February 11, 2015 |